The Remote Controlled Beetle (Soon to be Human?) and God’s Holiness

The problem with neurology is to understand man himself. - Wilder Penfield

Concurrent with the last post on mind-control, it was recently announced that scientists successfully created the first-ever, remote controlled and accurate-flying beetle. That’s right, Hirotaka Sato at the University of Berkeley, wired up and attached a chip to the beetle’s body that sends and receives radio signals to a remote controlling device. In other words, this once “free” animal of nature has become the equivalent of a child’s remote control airplane. Here’s the project (BPN451) abstract:

Despite major advances, performance of micro air vehicles (MAV’s) is still limited in terms of size, payload capacity, endurance, and controllability. Various species of insects have as-yet unmatched flight capabilities and increasingly well understood muscular and nervous systems. Additionally, some of these insects undergo complete metamorphosis making them amenable to implantation and internal manipulation during metamorphosis. In light of this, we attempt to create implantable bio-interface to electrically stimulate nervous and muscular systems of alive insect to control its flight. Our first target is beetle for the insect platform, and we would like to call it ‘cyborg beetle’.

Of course, the question everyone has in their mind (no pun intended) is will they be able to do this with humans someday? If “the human body is a machine,” (Julien Offroy de la Mettrie), as the dominant materialist paradigm of naturalistic science would assume, then the answer is an almost certain “yes.” Plug in a few things here and flip a switch there, and bam! A robot has been born. But on the other hand, if human beings give rise to a conscious will and mind that is immaterial and yet can act upon biological, physical structures, then the picture seems much more different. Throw in the equally-true Christian doctrine of regeneration and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and such mind-control fantasies become even more fanatical.

One does wonder, is the beetle aware that he’s not in control of his wings and muscles since the chip implant? Perhaps he was never “aware” in the first place, so, we would probably answer “no.” Whatever exists in the beetle’s brain  is nothing more than atoms (as far as we can tell), and as such, nothing more exists than cause and effect between biological and molecular events.

But is this different with humans? Are God’s “image-bearers” somehow more complex? If humans had chips rigged up to their cortex that controlled their arms and legs (this has already become common use in America, only nerve reassignments instead of a chip-implant) and had someone else on the other end of the signal control their body, would they be aware of it? Common sense says “yes,” and so does the science.

The ever-famous Canadian neurologist Wilder Penfield changed the world of neuroscience  by answering this very question (this Oxford and John Hopkins University scholar was once called “the greatest living Canadian.”) In an innovative experiment to cure patients’ epilepsy, Penfield developed the “Montreal procedure,” which involves probing around a person’s brain while that person is completely conscious on the operating table (yet under local anesthesia). Seizures begin at one location of the brain and continue to spread, making symptoms and seizures worse and worse as time goes on. Through the influence of Sir Charles Sherrington (former Demonstrator of Anatomy at Cambridge, scholar of the Man on his Nature Gifford Lectures and holder of over 20 honorary doctorates),Penfield decided to electrically stimulate various parts of the brain until he found the tissue responsible for seizures…and then kill that part of the brain:

Before an epileptic seizure, he knew, patients experience an “aura,” a warning that the seizure is about to occur. Penfield thought if he could provoke this aura with a mild electric current on the brain, then he would have located the source of the seizure activity and could remove or destroy that bit of tissue. While patients were fully conscious, though anesthetized, he opened their skulls and tried to pinpoint the source of their epilepsy. (People and Discoveries)

En route to this task, Penfield quickly found out that stimulation of the temporal lobes led patients to immediately recall vivid, sensory experiences and memories. Penfield recounts:

When one of these flashbacks was reported to me by a conscious patient, I was incredulous. For example, when a mother told me she was suddenly aware, as my electrode touched the cortex, of being in the kitchen listening to the voice of her little boy who was playing outside in the yard.

Christian apologist and professor, Douglas Groothuis, goes further in his essay Minds, Bodies and Persons:

Penfield called this a “double consciousness” wherein a memory was stimulated physically but was attended to and recognized as a memory by a conscious patient. Penfield likened this to the patient watching a television program while remaining aware that it wasn’t now happening.

Penfield repeated these results on hundreds of epileptic patients and concluded that a separable mind was able to track what the brain was doing as a result of the artificial stimulation. One’s mind in a sense could transcend the operations of the brain, monitoring memories without actually placing oneself in the situation remembered. Penfield noted that “The mind of the patient was as independent of the reflex action as was the mind of the surgeon who listened and strove to understand. Thus, my argument favours independence of mind-action.”22 Penfield also stated that if we liken the brain to a computer, it is not that we are a computer, but that we have a computer.23

Penfield, who began his research as a materialist, switched to dualism after extensive research with epileptic patients. He said, “Something else finds its dwelling place between the sensory complex and the motor mechanism. . . . There is a switchboard operator as well as a switchboard.”24

It seems we’ve answered the first question of “would a person be aware?” – although Penfield didn’t attempt to control a person’s actions through electrical brain stimulation. Let’s briefly apply Penfield’s discoveries to the remote-controlled beetle and the possibility for mind-control over people.

Penfield argues for a “switchboard operator” in human beings (not animals). That is, there is a consciousness, a physically transcendent, emergent type of thing (call it “mind,” “will,” “soul.” “person” ) that sort of “calls the shots,” if you will. But what if this new technology is installed in the human brain, which – to borrow from Penfield – adds an additional “switchboard-operator”? Who wins in that tug of war or push of buttons? Does the “person”  that is somehow attached/related to a human body win over the Japanese scientist sitting over across the room holding a remote control? Does Person A who thinks “my right arm will not be raised” win over Scientist X who is holding the remote control that sends signals to Person A’s brain that says “raise right arm“?

On a biological level, we’re led to believe the scientist would win if the electrical stimulation is the strongest. Electrical signals tell my arm to move up, and if a counter-electrical signal is stronger, it will win. It’s no different than if a person zapped my heart with a massive electrical charge that would cause it to stop beating. The 3rd person zapper won. But if a person zapped it with a little electrical charge, my heart would probably “win” and stay beating. The first person won. In that sense, the human body can more or less be reduced down to machines (although of a complex kind). In fact, to go even further, Penfield showed that he even had rough control or at least manipulation of human thought. He brought to attention thoughts, experiences, feelings, sights and sounds that the patients apparently didn’t have a “choice” in experiencing (unless they refused the surgery and went home).

Then again, what/who are the “patients” in the previous sentence?

Human bodies are human bodies; they work like machines. Human beings, however, are not machines. After all, what exactly was it that was aware of the patient’s thoughts? It was the patient, of course. It was the person. The reason Penfield became a dualist is that there is no material explanation how you can manipulate a person’s most vivid thoughts and still not control the direction of their consciousness or the state of their awareness. I suppose he could altogether kill the patients and change their current “state” of consciousness, but that is far from controlling it in the sense that a scientist controls a flying beetle or brings memories to our attention. Indeed, the person, the consciousness, the mind, could not be changed, nor touched with a probe of any kind. The person’s will could be easily violated, yes, but the person could not be violated, measured, or even touched at all.

Maybe that’s all part of being made in God’s “likeness.” For God certainly can’t be violated, observed, or influenced like the human body. And so the creature gets traits from the Creator. However, even as that we are liked God in “every way it is possible to be like God” (Van Til), God’s inviolability and separateness from the world transcends all human comparisons and analogies. God has a first-person experience of privacy and transcendence far beyond our own. Indeed, God is Holy. While our consciousness/personhood is private and inaccessible to other human beings just as God’s personhood/consciousness is private and inaccessible (in principle) to other human beings, our consciousness/personhood is not private and inaccessible to God. God sees you as if you were entirely bare, stripped of all external functions and coverings. Human thoughts can be manipulated, observed and even interpreted by scientists on the cutting edge of neurology and neuroscience these days. Scary isn’t it?

But here’s something more scary: God can do, see, and control even more than that!

He can see the very intentions of your inmost being. “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether” (Ps. 139:4). Before you even make a decision to entertain one thought or another, God is there, watching, waiting, observing, judging, moving. And, contrary to the mainstream evangelical and Arminian belief that God does not violate our hearts or “libertarian freewill” (listen here for refutation of libertarian Arminianism), Solomon says “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.” (Prov 21:1). Paul quotes the Old Testament passage, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” and then concludes the matter:

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”  But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”  Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? (Romans 9:18-21, ESV)

In conclusion, human beings can manipulate and to some degree control a person’s thoughts through advanced neurological technology. But human beings cannot control other human beings (there is a distinction between “machine” and “person”). God, however, can do both. Moreover, Scripture is clear that we can know the thoughts of God. In fact,  it is God’s will that we should “follow God’s thoughts after him” (Augustine, Van Til, etc.). So the final question is, if we can know God’s will and thoughts as revealed in His Word just as God can know our thoughts by God’s very character and abilities, where does that leave the mind of God?

Let us proclaim with Paul:

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!  “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11)